|
NEWT GINGRICH SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR STATEMENTS THAT ARE A DISGRACE TO OUR COUNTRY
Washington, D.C. - Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday this House of Representatives passed legislation to authorize funding for the Department of State, for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, and to provide direction and guidance in the area of foreign policy. We are fortunate indeed to have hundreds of men and women working for the State Department here and around the world who have dedicated their lives to public service and are committed to serving our country at home and abroad.
These public servants had been recently subjected to outrageous and unwarranted attacks by the former Speaker of this House, Newt Gingrich. In a scurrilous article in the current issue of Foreign Policy, entitled Rogue State Department, and in an earlier speech he gave before the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gingrich accuses the men and women of the State Department of nothing less than undermining the status and respect of the United States around the world.
In his article, Mr. Gingrich asserts that the cause of rising anti-American sentiment around the world is that the men and women of the State Department have ``abdicated values and principles in favor of accommodation and passivity.'' He accuses them of propping up dictators, coddling the corrupt and ignoring secret police abuse around the world. This from the man who was Speaker of this House, led this body in a three to one vote against President Clinton's Bosnia policy, a policy that started the process leading to the overthrow of the war criminal Mr. Milosevic.
Mr. Gingrich's article piggybacks on an earlier speech he gave before the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington in which he claimed the State Department was engaging in a quote ``deliberate and systematic effort to undermine President Bush's foreign policy.'' These are extremely serious charges.
Before making such serious charges, one would think that a person who wanted to be taken seriously would provide some credible evidence. He does not.
Let us start with the fact that it is the President of the United States, not the foreign service or any other career civil servants, who selects the top policy-makers at the Department of State, beginning with the Secretary of State. Indeed, the top jobs in State Department are awarded to political appointees of the President, starting with Secretary of State Colin Powell. They are the captains of the ship. They set the vision, they establish the policies and they give the orders.
If Mr. Gingrich believes what he writes, that the State Department is a culture that props up dictators, coddles the corrupt and ignores secret police, then his complaint is with President Bush who appointed the political team at the Department and who are charged with ensuring that the policies of the President are carried out.
The fact of the matter is Mr. Gingrich provides not one single example in his article of where the career foreign service or other civil servants of the Department of State have refused to carry out the policies established by the Secretary of State and the President.
What does he refer to as exhibit A in his capital case against the men and women of our State Department? He points to an internal analysis done by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. That is the bureau within the Department of State responsible for analyzing intelligence information we collect and analyzing that information, and he suggests that the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and that that information, that some of the information collected, that our post-war challenges in Iraq are more daunting than President Bush's sunny rhetoric suggests.
Specifically, in a portion of his article entitled Out of Sync, he contrasts statements made in a speech given by President Bush to statements made in an internal, confidential assessment by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In a speech in Dearborn, Michigan, the President stated, ``I have confidence in the future of a free Iraq. The Iraqi people are fully capable of self-government.'' The internal State Department analysis reportedly stated that ``Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq,'' and that ``electoral democracy were to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements.''
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the statements made in the INR memo are reasonable conclusions. The facts on the ground in Iraq have demonstrated clearly that liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq, not impossible, but certainly difficult. It is a challenge ahead.
It is also obvious that elections in Iraq could be exploited by anti-American Islamic fundamentalist forces.
That does not mean we should not support elections. Of course we should. But we should be clear-eyed about the possible consequences.
The important point here is not so much that Mr. Gingrich is blind to the obvious accuracy of these assessments that were made in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The issue is whether we want our policymakers to receive objective and independent analysis about the situation in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, or do we want our nonpartisan experts to tailor, to fit their analyses to the political and ideological platform of the President, whether that President be a Republican or whether that President be a Democrat.
Mr. Gingrich would like the professional analysts to manipulate the facts to fit the policy, rather than have a policy informed by the facts. He would have the taxpayers support a cadre of professional yes men and women to make sure that their internal and confidential analyses of the facts were in sync with the President's policy. Anyone else, any other conclusions, he apparently considers a traitor to the cause.
What is amazing, what is amazing is that Mr. Gingrich would choose this moment to make this criticism. We are now learning more each day about how intelligence officials felt pressured to manipulate their assessments about the alleged links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and how their refutation of the claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material from Niger was ignored by the White House. Indeed, the State Department's analysts in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the very officials that Mr. Gingrich condemns in his article, determined last year that the report about Iraq importing nuclear material from Niger was not credible.
The President admitted recently that claims about Iraq seeking nuclear material from Africa should never have been included in his State of the Union speech this year. However, by Newt Gingrich's logic, the fact that the Bureau of Intelligence and Research reached a contrary finding that conflicted with the President's statement in the State of the Union address would be evidence that the State Department seeks to undermine Bush foreign policy.
It is a sad, sad day for our country when Mr. Gingrich would attack accurate and truthful statements made by career State Department officials as part of a systematic effort to undermine foreign policy. We should be working hard to create a bigger, a better firewall between intelligence analysts and the policymakers rather than weaken that wall, as proposed by Mr. Gingrich.
Let us consider another example: In a speech in Cincinnati last October, the President stated, and I quote, ``Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.''
We now know that intelligence analysts in the State Department, as well as experts at the Department of Energy, concluded that the tubes' characteristics made it much more likely they were suited for artillery rockets. British intelligence and subsequently a team of American, British, and German experts convened by the International Atomic Energy Agency, with 120 years of cumulative experience, agreed that the thickness of the aluminum tube walls made them unsuitable for uranium enrichment purposes. And yet again, by Mr. Gingrich's logic, the experts at the State Department would be viewed as undermining U.S. foreign policy for reaching any conclusions at odds with what the President says.
The fact that certain intelligence assessments from INR, or any other government agency for that matter, may be out of sync with the President's policy does not mean, does not mean that those intelligence analysts are engaged in some kind of deliberate and systematic effort to undermine our foreign policy. The President may always choose to ignore or disagree with the independent assessments of experts, but it is folly and shortsighted to suggest that he should not have the benefit of those independent assessments.
The intelligence analysts at INR and elsewhere in the government have a duty to provide the Secretary of State and ultimately the President with their best assessment and their best judgment. It would be irresponsible for them to do otherwise when the lives of American men and women are at stake; and it is outrageous that Mr. Gingrich would have nonpartisan public servants betray their mission, violate their integrity and pander to the politicians.
Mr. Gingrich titles his article the ``Rogue State Department.'' I suggest he focus his gaze across the Potomac. There at the Pentagon certain political appointees of President Bush have systematically undermined the independence and professionalism of our intelligence services. There, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, they created a so-called Office of Special Plans, a rump group set up to manipulate the intelligence to fit the policy. This truly was a rogue operation, and apparently Mr. Gingrich, who sits on the Defense Advisory Board, believes that operation should become the model for the State Department and other intelligence agencies.
Another remarkable part about the Gingrich foreign policy article is the extent to which he believes that anti-American sentiment abroad is the result of inadequate PR, inadequate public relations, and inadequate spin control, rather than the substance of the policies themselves. He states, and I quote, ``One can hardly overstate how poorly the United States communicates its message and values to the world. Large majorities in France, Germany, and South Korea oppose the United States' perspective on Iraq, not to mention the 95 percent disapproval rate in Turkey.''
In other words, he sees these disapproval ratings as the result of our failure to explain our actions, rather than stemming from the actions themselves. Yes, says Mr. Gingrich, if only we had a better PR machine to explain to France, to Germany, South Korea, Turkey and others around the world our theory of preemptive wars, our theory of the nuclear first-use doctrine, and our claims that Iraq's WMD posed an imminent threat, then they would be enthusiastic supporters of our Iraq policy.
And how would he do this? How would he put together this transformation? What is his solution?
Bring in ``professional help.'' I kid you not. It is on page 46 of this article. To address the anti-American sentiments around the world, we need not, according to Mr. Gingrich, reconsider any of our policies. We need not consider working in partnership with other nations to resolve international challenges. Rather, we should ``bring in business advisory groups drawn from internationally sophisticated corporations to advise the State Department on how to improve U.S. communication strategies.''
Apparently, the world, according to Newt, is just one big game of spin control. Yes, bring in the big boys from Madison Avenue and the executives from multi-national corporations to explain our foreign policy and the world will love us.
Just as amazing is whom Mr. Gingrich chooses to blame for what he perceives as a failed public relations game. It is not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose incendiary remarks unnecessarily inflamed European sentiment against us. It is not the President and his White House spokesmen who command the bully pulpit and wield the megaphone. No, according to Mr. Gingrich, the culprits are the men and women in the bowels of the State Department. Yes, they, according to Mr. Gingrich, are the ones who are responsible for the raging anti-American sentiment around the world.
You know, these outrageous accusations leveled by Mr. Gingrich might be dismissed as the wild rantings of a former Member of Congress who, as a private citizen, is free to express his views without being held accountable to anybody but himself. But he has not surrendered all his public responsibilities. He currently serves on the Defense Policy Advisory Board, which is chartered to provide the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense with advice on a range of national security matters.
The caption accompanying Mr. Gingrich's article on foreign policy references his position on the board, and it is in light of the responsibilities of that position that we should judge his statements. The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State cannot allow Mr. Gingrich's McCarthy-like attacks against the professionalism and integrity of the men and women of the State Department to stand. To do so would send a terrible message at this very critical time.
First, as our Nation faces serious challenges abroad, our foreign policy must be guided by the best informed intelligence and analysis our diplomats and intelligence officers can provide. To suppress that information could jeopardize the success of our policies and endanger the lives of our citizens.
Second, it would be folly for our national security leaders to see American problems abroad simply as PR issues to be addressed through an aggressive ad and spin control campaign. We cannot afford to block out the insights and the analyses and the assessments of our regional and country experts in the State Department and elsewhere in the United States Government.
Mr. Gingrich has openly and loudly attacked the integrity of the men and women in the State Department. Moreover, he has advocated positions that would weaken our ability to confront the challenges we face abroad. Allowing him to remain on the Defense Policy Advisory Board would send a terrible signal. It would send a message to the men and women who work every day to protect our national security and advance our interests abroad that his statements are acceptable to this White House and this administration.
Mr. Gingrich should do the right thing now and resign from the board. If he does not resign, the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State should hold him accountable for his statements, and they should demand his resignation from the board. The Bush administration can either stand by the statements of Mr. Gingrich or they can make it clear that those statements are unacceptable.
Mr. President, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, where do you stand?
|